The Fruit of Forgotten Things

I sat on her balcony watching the rain blur the city lights, nursing a papaya I'd cut open too early. The flesh was still pale, almost white—unripe, like everything between us these past three years.

Mia had asked me to watch her apartment while she was in Tokyo, which felt like a test. Or maybe she just needed someone to feed the cat. Barnaby—a neurotic Siamese with judgmental eyes—watched me from the back of the sofa, as if he knew I'd been the one to fracture our friendship six months ago.

The water drummed against the glass, relentless and indifferent. I remembered the night she told me she'd slept with him—him being the man I'd been planning to leave my husband for. The way she'd said it, like she was confessing to stealing a pair of earrings, not dismantling my entire life.

"You're my oldest friend," she'd pleaded, her mascara running. "Shouldn't that count for something?"

I'd laughed, bitter and sharp. "Friendship isn't currency, Mia. You can't spend it on forgiveness."

Barnaby jumped onto the table, dipping his nose toward my papaya.

"No," I said gently. "You won't like it."

But that wasn't true. I didn't like it either—the bitterness, the way it stuck to my teeth. Yet I kept eating, as if the discomfort were some form of penance.

Mia had left a note on the fridge: "Help yourself to anything. I'll call when I land."

She'd underlined "call," like we used to in college, before we learned that phones could also be weapons.

I thought about the papaya we'd shared in Costa Rica, years ago. How we'd laughed until we cried, sticky juice running down our chins, neither of us knowing that in five years, one of us would betray the other. That we'd stand on opposite sides of something unbridgeable, two people who used to share everything, now sharing nothing but a cat and a rainy afternoon.

The papaya sat half-eaten on the plate. Barnaby curled in my lap, finally trusting me enough to surrender his weight.

I picked up my phone. Her name sat at the top of my recent calls, still starred as a favorite.

Some friendships end in fire. Others just dissolve slowly, like sugar in water, until you realize you've been drinking nothing but sweetness all along.

I pressed delete.